Friday, June 7, 2013

Spellbound

This movie is fantastic! This was my first Korean movie and I think that I did a pretty good job in picking a good one. The main reason that I chose to watch this was because I had just finished Shut Up! Flower Boy Band and had totally fallen in love with Lee Min Ki. (I'm still not over what happened by the way) As soon as I read the synopsis, I knew that I had to watch it.

I recently re-watched this drama because I had just been traumatized by the Game of Thrones episode "The Rains of Castamere". It was made even worse because I have read the books and I knew what was coming. Let me tell you, it was not pretty. Since I needed a pick me up because everything sucked at that moment, I knew that I could count on this movie to make me laugh and give me a little scare.

The story line is Jo Goo (Lee Min Ki) is a street magician who sees this woman with a dark aura, Yeo Ri (Son Yeh Jin). He is inspired by her and creates a horror themed magic show.

About a year later he is preforming at big concert halls and drawing huge crowds that come to be amazed and scared. Jo Goo also gives Yeo Ri a job in his show as the ghost that comes out of the wardrobe; to congratulate the staff for a job well done, Jo Goo offers to treat them to sashimi, but only if Yeo Ri comes along. She is notorious for coming up with excuses not to go on these excursions and this time is no different. She escapes to her home leaving her coworkers confused, so just the usual.

Sexy stage makeup

When Yeo Ri goes home we find it is her birthday and she sits and eats a cake with only a giant teddy bear for company. She talks to her mom and sister who are in Norway and tells them that she is happy and is enjoying her life. Yeo Ri goes to sleep in her tent that is in her living room, only to be awakened shortly after by the ghosts of two young girls.

At the next performance, Jo Goo forces Yeo Ri to go out with the staff and she reluctantly agrees. At dinner, one of the staff members talks about being beaten by his dead aunt in a dream. A very drunk Yeo Ri then begins to talk about ghosts visiting people in their dreams and then proceeds to rip Jo Goo's shirt. With that, she mumbles her apology and leaves for home.

Once Yeo Ri wakes up and remembers what she did, she calls Jo Goo to apologize. As they are talking, Yeo Ri sees a ghost, Jo Goo worries about the sound that he hears over the phone and decides to go and check if she is okay. While he is there, he sees the ghost of a small boy, but Yeo Ri tells him that it is the neighbor boy playing hide and seek. He accepts this excuse and heads for home.

It is now the middle of the night and Jo Goo is asleep, but he is awakened by a small boy in his house who he recognizes as the "neighbor boy" from Yeo Ri's house. He looks around the house for the little boy only to catch his reflection in the glass from a picture frame.

He calls Yeo Ri over and she tells him that the little boy is actually a ghost. As they look through the house they notice that all of Jo Goo's model cars have been flipped over. This leads them to a car accident off the side of a road. There is a man and his son, the man makes it, the son does not. The scene ends with the little ghost boy bowing to the two of them and disappearing. Even though this scene ends on a bittersweet note, there are some hysterical scenes while the two of them are "ghost hunting".

Hiding outside in a box, like the manly man he is

Looking for ghosts in the toilet

His new best friend

One of the things that this movie does well is the build up of Yeo Ri and Jo Goo's relationship. I have seen some other movies where all of a sudden, our main characters are in love and it's jarring. These two slowly fall in love deciding that they can have a relationship together, even through their own insecurities. Yeo Ri has to make the chose to let someone into her life that she has lived in solitude for so long and Jo Goo has to decide if he loves Yeo Ri enough to deal with all the ghosts that come to her, mainly her high school friend who has haunted her since a horrible bus accident.

This is one of my favorite scenes

Along with the build up of the romance, it also does a very good job combining comedy, romance, and horror in a equal portions. This movie genre theme is also used in Jo Goo's describing of Yeo Ri's life. There is the theme of a horror movie heroine not being about to have a love interest because then the story is no longer one of horror because the woman is not alone. Yeo Ri also states in the movie that her life is a horror story and it is up to her, by the end, to decided if she wants her story to continue that way, or if she thinks that she can move into a romantic comedy.

This is a rather short post today, so here is a collage of some of my favorite scenes and also an excuse to use more pictures of Lee Min Ki.

This drama used to be in Youtube with really good subs, but now the only place I can find it is on Dramacrazy.net with mediocre subs under the title Chilling Romance. It is still worth a watch though!

2 comments:

I agree. This is one of the best Korean movies I have seen. By the way, for anyone unfamiliar with Korean movies, as a general rule Korean dramas are awesome while Korean movies are often much less awesome. It's sort of a mixed bag.

I love this movie so much too. Especially Lee MinKi. He is wonderful. I can't believe though, that you didn't mention that there is about 90 seconds of pure awkwardness during one part of the movie, that you just have to get through. But even so it is my favorite Korean Movie to date.